


Thunder Lizard

by gardnerhill



Series: Adele's Day Off [1]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Community: watsons_woes, Female Character of Color, Gen, POV Original Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 15:15:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/800151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Can't a working girl sketch dinosaurs in peace?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thunder Lizard

Such amazing beasts! Still, Adele mused as she bent over her tablet, her charcoal scratching out the majestic curve of rib and vertebra, it would be terrible if they were still alive to roam the earth and devour people at will. But what a sight they must have been –

"Aha! As I thought!"

Her pencil skittered at the exclamation behind her, smudging the _Brontosaurus_ ' depiction. Adele pinched her lips at the man's loud voice echoing through the chamber.

"There, my dear fellow! Do you see it now?"

Really, this was just _too_ much. Some people simply didn't think that rules were meant for them – including the rule that museums were churches of the mind and quiet was better than noise in such hallowed halls.

"There! And there! Oh, we have him now, old man, we have him now! Ha ha!"

A surreptitious glance in her mirror (she wouldn't give the fellow the satisfaction of ruining her study) revealed two respectable-looking older gentlemen – well-to-do from their dress - bent over the case displaying the bone and flint tools used by pre-historic Englishmen – arrowheads, hand-axes, spear-points. The taller thinner man was the one responsible for all the noise, considering the way he gesticulated at the case; his companion spoke intensely, trying to quiet him.

The curator hurried over to deal with them, his much lower voice appeasing rather than stern at the sight of two such well-heeled patrons. Sourly, Adele mused that if _she_ had made such a commotion, the proprietor would have simply thrown her out (possibly with a gibe at her dark skin and her plain dress thrown in for good measure), but it didn't do to complain about one's betters when there was a sketch to finish.

Fortunately the rude man was a good deal quieter and Adele could concentrate. The great curve of the neck, that ridiculous tiny horselike skull perched on that immense body…

The voices behind her were indistinct now – the curator, the tall loud fellow and the quieter chap. And something in the tone of the words she could no longer hear – the current of the voices – made Adele pause and half-turn, full of apprehension for a moment. There was something powerful in the tall fellow's tone, low and dangerous like a tiger's growl that was completely different from his earlier impression of a howler monkey. His friend's voice was quiet too but now it was just as fierce. The curator's voice was high, faint, outrage turning into fear.

Oh, surely there wasn't going to be a fight over this? Such respectable men? How ridiculous! If only they'd just be quiet and leave a laundress to enjoy her half-day-a-month in peace!

Finally, the sound of three sets of receding footsteps.

Smiling with relief, Adele reached down to make the final flourish over the sketch.

Which was when a case crashed, the second man cried out in pain, the tall man shouted in rage, and a police-whistle screamed through the cavernous hall.

***

Adele Jacobson (nee Hart) painted and drew her whole life, teaching her daughters her craft. Her paintings and crayon-portaits hung through her house, displaying the rough beauty of the amateur. She was perhaps fondest of the sketch she made of herself and her Tom as newlyweds.

But she saved a good deal of affection for the old smudged drawing of a _Brontosaurus_ skeleton, forever marred by a great swatch of charcoal across its breadth. For, trapped in that picture like a fly in amber, was her story about how she was present that day at the museum when Sherlock Holmes ("Yes, Daisy, _that_ Sherlock Holmes – I'd heard of him but never seen him before") caught a murderer who'd hidden the weapon amid the hand-axes in the flint case – a murderer who'd tried to brain Mr. Holmes' friend with one of the old flint-nodules during his escape attempt and had been brought down in cuffs by the police.

"I bound his friend's head with my kerchief to stop the bleeding," Adele said to her wide-eyed listeners. "Mr. Holmes thanked me himself, and asked if he could reward me in any way."

"What did you ask him, Auntie?" piped up George.

Adele smiled. "I told him to be quieter the next time he came to my museum. That made his friend laugh!"

**Author's Note:**

> For the [](http://www.dreamwidth.org/profile?user=watsons_woes)[](http://www.dreamwidth.org/profile?user=watsons_woes)**watsons_woes** 2012 July Writing Prompt #1 (July 17th): _Original Character POV of Holmes and Watson, of a situation which should be mundane, but, for whatever reason, isn't._


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